Every Breath You Take: A Novel (A Kristen Conner Mystery Book 2) Read online

  “What’s yours?” a uniform asks him. “And can I borrow your debit card. I think I just figured out your password.”

  Everyone laughs and Martinez reddens and mutters under his breath.

  “No one is punching numbers on that beast,” Blackshear says. “We’re going to get some backup in here. She wasn’t stupid so the code isn’t her birthday or social security number, but even if she was idiot enough to use one of those numbers, there might be a trick or two built into the mechanism that destroys some important evidence.”

  “Besides, no woman would use her birthday as a code,” the uniform says. “Too sensitive of a subject.”

  He thinks that is hilarious but takes his laughter down a couple notches when he realizes no one is laughing with him. I look at his lanyard and see the name Russ.

  We all head back for our assigned areas of the condo but Russ goes for a laugh one more time as he calls to Martinez, “So what is your bank, Detective? I got the key.”

  “¿Qué te parece que un puñetazo en la cara,” Martinez calls back.

  I look at Don for a translation. He just shrugs.

  I have to pick a new password for all my accounts.

  • • •

  That didn’t have to happen. But it should probably have happened years ago.

  Barbara, it was bad enough when you got so full of yourself that you actually thought you were part of high society.

  But when you suddenly got a conscience, you were even worse.

  • • •

  My phone vibrates but nothing is happening on my screen. I like my new iPhone. The guy at Verizon told me it was part of a 4G network. I guess that’s good. I am using more features than I thought I would, namely Words With Friends with Kaylen and Klarissa. I sweep the screen again. I push the only button on the unit. Nothing. The vibrating noise has stopped and I put it back down.

  I downshift to fourth and then third in quick succession to assist my braking and dart off at my exit and then gun into a gap in the traffic, barely slowing down. Reynolds is picking me up in twenty-five minutes for a date. I’m still fifteen minutes from home and have to take a shower.

  It’s Friday night. We went out last night too. He flies back to D.C. in the morning. He wanted to pick me up earlier but it’s another overtime day that has Martinez crying about the toll the extra hours are taking on his love life. I told Reynolds 8:00 was best I could do and left the office at 7:00. The Friday night crowd is already out in force.

  I consider running a yellow light at Division but since I have no suicidal tendencies, think better of putting my tiny Miata in the path of a giant SUV or dump truck. My phone vibrates again. I look down. Still nothing on my screen. Is it broken? Then it finally dawns on me. The temp phone they gave me to use with Derrick Jensen is what’s vibrating. I need to pick up and tell Derrick to stop calling and texting me. My eyes don’t leave the road as my right handle fumbles and feels everywhere in my carryall purse, searching for the phone. I growl in frustration. I remove my hand to shift gears numerous times and finally find it as I bounce into my parking lot. Someone near my unit is having a party and I end up parking in another area of my apartment complex.

  I start walking briskly and look down at the little Nokia screen. He’s relentless. Twenty-five texts, eleven missed calls, nine voice messages.

  • • •

  “So are you asking me to assess this or are you just trying to make me jealous?”

  Reynolds is in my living room. I’m in my bathroom finishing my makeup. My place is small enough that we can hear each other just fine through two open doorways.

  “I didn’t think FBI agents were allowed to have emotions like fear and jealousy. Might divert them from the task at hand.”

  Reynolds arrived a few minutes after I got out of the shower and threw on a pair of jeans and a blouse. When I opened my apartment door I saw that he had dressed casually—a pair of gray slacks, what looks like Italian shoes with a black tassels, navy jacket, and white dress shirt. No power tie but he didn’t forget his monograms. My hair was a wet and tangled mess and I hadn’t started putting on my next-to-no makeup.

  I don’t have the wardrobe to date Reynolds, I think to myself. Klarissa and her longtime off-and-on-again boyfriend, Warren, are off again. Maybe he needs to ask Klarissa out.

  I now have a row of new clothes in my closet from my undercover stint. Problem is everything is tighter and smaller than I can wear. I’m halfway being modest but I’m all the way being comfort-conscious. Why would I wear jeans that squeeze my waist like a boa on a baby pig? Maybe I’ll try to return and exchange everything tomorrow. That would mean I have to go shopping. Ugh.

  “I’m not ready,” I said to him as he stood in the doorway.

  He just smiled and pulled me into a big bear hug and caught his first full-on kiss. I think I kissed him back.

  “You look fabulous,” he said when I pulled back and motioned him to come in.

  “Give me fifteen minutes, Major,” I said. “Want something to work on while I make you wait?”

  “The Ferguson murder?”

  “That would be good, but I was actually thinking about Derrick Jensen. I need to understand what’s going on in his mind.”

  I gave him a thirty-second synopsis on Derrick Jensen’s obsessive calling and texting.

  “This is easy,” he said. “He’s got a crush on you.”

  “Okay, then figure out how he fits into the Jack Durham and Barbara Ferguson murder. I think he knows something that would help.”

  After asking if I was trying to make him jealous, Reynolds showed why he’s a special agent in the FBI. He peppered me with some good ideas while it took me thirty minutes to get ready. What has Bobbie done to me? My hair is still down but I got it to flip up at the bottom. Black dress. Three inch heels. A cascade of five or six necklaces I flung together. Dangling earrings. Not as many bracelets as Bobbie would have put on me, but more than I’ve worn at one time in my entire life.

  “Wow,” Reynolds says.

  My vocabulary is rubbing off on him.

  “Thank you,” I say awkwardly. Then I ask, “So you’re jealous of Derrick’s interest?”

  “Maybe a little . . . but realistically, not really.”

  What does realistically mean? My muddled thinking is wearing off on him too.

  “But between Derrick and the ‘every breath you take’ messages, I think you need to at least read and listen to all his messages. We’re in no hurry. Let’s knock this out before we go.”

  I think I might be crazy about Reynolds. He takes work as seriously as I do.

  49

  “WHERE YOU AT Conner?” Zaworski asks.

  “Just finished coaching my niece’s soccer game.”

  “You got other plans?”

  “No, sir.”

  Reynolds is on a jet somewhere. In the past week, I’ve gone from being lonely to going out on a couple dates to needing some alone time.

  “Good. Need you at City Hall for a noon meeting with Flannigan.”

  “It’s gonna be close for me,” I say. “I am a mess and gotta get cleaned up.”

  “I’ll let her know you may be a few minutes late.”

  “Who else is going to be there, sir?”

  “Czaka, Blackshear, and me. Don’t know who else she’ll have there from her group.”

  “Where in the building, sir?”

  “Use the Randolph Street entrance. I’ll have Blackshear wait for you in the lobby.”

  • • •

  Blackshear and I walk in. Everyone is looking at me with appraising eyes. Ruh roh.

  Everyone stands. Czaka introduces Blackshear and me to Angela Flannigan and Stan Jacobs. We take our seats. Jacobs doesn’t waste time.

  “So you went to see Derrick Jensen with the FBI last night? Was that an approved line of inquiry?”

  “I didn’t even know it was going to be part of the investigation until after I got there. In terms of being with the FBI . . . that
wasn’t in an official capacity. Agent Reynolds is just a friend of mine.”

  “So you were making a social call?”

  Okay. This tone is making me mad. I think Zaworski can tell. He’s picking at something on his jacket lapel.

  “No. As I’m sure you are aware, Stan, Derrick Jensen has been a central figure in the Jack Durham murder investigation. When he tells me he’s got something I need to hear, you better believe I’m on my way.”

  “Without letting anyone in your department know?”

  “Everyone was informed by email and Captain Blackshear by telephone as soon as the meeting ended.”

  “But not before?”

  I’m not answering Stan the man.

  He tents his fingers and stares. I match his pose and stare back. I can do this all day.

  “Here’s the thing, Kristen,” Flannigan interrupts. “We just went before a Grand Jury and charged Penny Martin with the murder of Jack Durham.”

  Yeah?

  “Don’t you think it would have been good to have this before we went to the hearing?”

  “Absolutely. But I didn’t have it.”

  “Listen, Stan and Angela. This doesn’t mean Penny isn’t the murderer,” Czaka says. “Every investigation is a living, breathing thing. You get what you get when you get it.”

  Is Czaka standing up for me? I might faint.

  “So now we have to explain to a jury that Penny Martin killed her dad?” Jacobs says with a sigh. “That should go over well.”

  Now is the time to keep my mouth shut but I don’t: “Not go over well? Give me a break. You don’t think that was going to come out anyway? And by the way, this isn’t just about your case against Penny Martin. It’s about making sure we got the right person.”

  “Thanks for the tutorial on law and order, Detective Conner,” Jacobs deadpans back at me.

  Blackshear kicks me under the table and I hold what I want to say.

  “No, this is all good, Kristen,” Flannigan says with a forced smile on her face. “Here’s the deal. Nothing Jensen said to you leaves this room until it’s confirmed. Once it is, we’ll decide how it impacts the Martin case then. Even if Jack was her dad, one, she wouldn’t be the first person to kill a father, and second, the mountain of evidence against her is insurmountable from where I sit. ”

  I think I now realize why I got called down for this meeting. The preamble was for show. The real point was to let me know to keep my mouth shut.

  First of all, I do keep my mouth shut on police business. Second, all she had to do was have Zaworski or Blackshear call me. I didn’t need this dog and pony show.

  • • •

  I actually felt sorry for Derrick. He was drunk and stunk. If Reynolds had even a flicker of jealousy, it dissipated in the moment Derrick opened the door and belched as a greeting. Scratching his butt wasn’t real attractive either. I kept my eyes on his face. A quick glance suggested to me that he didn’t have anything on under his robe—and in his condition he hadn’t tied it very well.

  “Jack and Penny were trying to figure out how to be father and daughter . . . she would never have murdered him.”

  Derrick repeated that to us in a variety of iterations about twenty times.

  Don finally led him back to his room and directed him to get in the shower. The two of us cleared his living room of empty Gentleman Jack bottles and reeking to-go containers from half-eaten meals.

  I would have run the dishwasher for him but he hadn’t used any of his own tableware. We filled two trash bags with his leftovers and put them at the front door to take out when we left.

  He came out to the living room, half-presentable and maybe half-sober.

  In the next hour we didn’t get much more than the bombshell that Penny was Jack’s daughter . . . which meant Barbara and Jack had a relationship when Jack was in high school.

  When we pressed him on this point his answer was always the same: “Talk to Jack’s old man.”

  I plan to.

  50

  MY INSTINCTS AS a detective have been better than my discipline at times. I was the only one who questioned the arrest of Martin—but I was the one who read her rights. I’m not the only one who questions it now. The bandwagon is gaining a few members, though not Flannigan . . . she isn’t about to climb aboard.

  The million-dollar question is if Penny Martin didn’t kill Jack Durham—and the evidence is still stacked against her, whether she and Jack are blood related or not—who did?

  Maybe if Flannigan gets on the Free-Penny bandwagon I’ll get off. Does that make me a contrarian or just difficult?

  The search of Bobbie’s safe was interesting but I’m not sure how helpful.

  There was almost two-hundred-grand in cash. Wow. Jewels. Two handguns—a little bit of a surprise. The bottom two rows held 200 one-pound gold bullion bars. The day we collected it the value was estimated at 6.6 million dollars. In the time I knew Bobbie, she expressed a lot of jealousy of others’ wealth. I’m still having a hard time figuring that out. She was rich. Period.

  We found her little black book with all her clients’ names, not just Jack and his lost boys. We are being sued by various news agencies to turn over the names of the men. We have an open investigation so we’re fighting it. Our legal department will also argue against disclosure on the grounds that Bobbie was never charged with running a prostitution ring or anything else illegal.

  There were checkbooks. Certificates of deposit. Her yearbooks starting from kindergarten and all the way through her high school graduation in 1979. Other family photo albums, but nothing with pictures taken in the last twenty years or so.

  Every driver’s license she ever carried was in there. She lived Arizona for almost five years. She was a student at Arizona State University for two years but when she dropped out to get married she was still a freshman in status. Her marriage lasted three years. Both the marriage and divorce certificates were in the safe. She had a passport in her name and interestingly, she had a second with her picture but a different name. Her escape plan. But how did she think she was going to carry all that gold? Two-hundred and fifty pounds of anything is not easy to smuggle across a border.

  Our financial forensics team is still going through her estate. It might be worth ten million. Penny is her sole heir. We found Bobbie’s Last Will and Testament. Even after some tax restitution and fines, at least half will be waiting for Penny if she escapes conviction. I guess it will be hers even if she doesn’t.

  When Flannigan heard Penny was the heir she started working on a theory that Penny hired someone to kill Bobbie while she was in jail. That would make her guilty of both patricide and matricide. Flannigan is grasping at straws. I think.

  The most interesting thing we uncovered in the secret safe was Penny’s birth certificate. Bobby’s neat handwriting was easy to read. Next to it, under the father’s printed name, was the unsteady scrawl of a sixteen-year-old high school junior.

  Jack Durham.

  • • •

  First Barbara and now Derrick . . . why won’t anyone cooperate?

  The case against Penny is ironclad. I’ll admit that was a lucky break for me. Such a better solution than Jack’s murder staying unsolved but dangerously open.

  Just look what they have on Penny. Why can’t people leave well enough alone?

  Every time I solve a problem, it creates a new one. But I can’t stop now. I have to work until I make this go away. Whatever it takes.

  I find it fascinating that one name keeps coming up. Detective Kristen Conner.

  We’re watching her. Do we need to do more?

  • • •

  We break for lunch. No Zaworski today—he went in for another round of chemo this morning. Blackshear, Konkade, Martinez, Randall, Squires, and I met to process where we are. It has been a busy week and we’re only halfway through it. Information is starting to flow in.

  When we found out Penny was Barbara’s daughter, we assumed she got the startup money for
her shady business from putting Penny up for adoption. We might have been partially correct, but her real starter capital was the cool million dollar check she got from Robert Durham, Sr., to have the pregnancy terminated and disappear.

  She cashed the check—a copy was found in her safe—stuffed it in an investment account and did disappear for a time. Her first stop was downstate in Mansfield, Illinois, where she had Penny and put her into what looked like a warm and happy home. Penny wasn’t the first kid to not like the family she grew up with for no apparent reason.

  Durham, Sr. still hasn’t agreed to a time when we can question him so we don’t know if he knew of Penny’s birth or not. Stanley McGill has been quite adamant that we will hear what he has to say only when he is ready to say whatever it is.

  That won’t stay true for long, even if Durham is a billionaire.

  From Mansfield, Bobbie moved to Phoenix, had her short-lived marriage, and from there returned to Chicago. Her return coincided with Jack’s graduation from college.

  We’ve worked back through all Jack’s friends and Bobbie’s contractors with a new line of questioning

  We have spoon-fed the media as little as we can get away with. My sister, Klarissa, is actually mad at me. Heck, she’s just plain mad these days. She and Warren, the sports guy at WCI-TV, have broken up yet again. If I had a gold bullion bar for every one of their breakups and reconciliations I might be living in a villa overlooking Lake Como in northern Italy next door to George Clooney. She is also waiting to hear back from Channel 2 in New York City, so that’s probably got her on edge, too.

  In all the interviews so far it was Derrick that probably told us the most and got us closest to the truth on Bobbie and Jack.

  “Jack was a bad boy even in high school,” he told us in an understatement.

  “You can look at him and all of us like we are the scum of the earth, but . . .”

  “But what?” Don coaxed.

  “But he was a good guy,” he said, looking down at his hands. “He was a real good guy. His dad messed him up on what happened with Barbara being pregnant. Jackie thought he loved her. He might have decided for himself that he wasn’t going to spend the rest of his life with a woman who was ten years older than him—but he never got that chance. His old man went crazy. They used to be fairly close. They fought like is normal when Jack was in high school, but they had a decent relationship. Never again. Jack was never the same. I honestly don’t know how he graduated from high school. The fact that he got through college and law school while seriously depressed and medicated, is pretty amazing. He was a bad boy but he was more than the press has portrayed.”